In general, a connector comprises a housing made of insulating plastic and conductive terminal members held by the housing. The housing is normally made by molding using a mold. The terminal members are held by the housing using a method of molding the housing into a predetermined shape in advance and then attaching the terminal members to the housing or a method of embedding the terminal members in the housing by insert injection molding when molding the housing.
However, in the case of the connector described above, since the housing is molded using the mold, the filling property of the material when molding the housing is poor and, further, the processing of the mold is laborious and thus its manufacture requires much time, leading to a high processing cost.
In view of this, in recent years, there has been proposed a connector in which an insulating film member has the function of a housing (see Patent Document 1: JP-A-2004-221052). In Patent Document 1, this type of connector is called a contact sheet. This contact sheet will be described with reference to FIGS. 1A and 1B.
In FIGS. 1A and 1B, a contact sheet 1 is made using upper and lower bonding sheets 2 and 3 and an adhesive sheet 4 interposed therebetween (FIG. 1A) and the upper and lower bonding sheets 2 and 3 are bonded to each other through the adhesive sheet 4 interposed therebetween (FIG. 1B). The upper bonding sheet 2 comprises a base sheet 2a formed from a film member and a plurality of contacts 2b each formed from a metal sheet. A part of each contact 2b is bonded by an adhesive to a lower surface of the base sheet 2a. The lower bonding sheet 3 comprises a base sheet 3a formed from a film member and a plurality of contacts 3b each formed from a metal sheet. A part of each contact 3b is bonded by an adhesive to an upper surface of the base sheet 3a. The contacts 2b are disposed spaced apart from each other and, likewise, the contacts 3b are disposed spaced apart from each other.
Since the base sheets 2a and 3a having the function of a housing are each formed from the film member, the contact sheet 1 shown in FIGS. 1A and 1B contributes to solving the problems of the housing which is molded using the mold.